In today's medical environment, various patient data is generated during a patient's stay in a hospital. The patient data is either stored electronically or written down on paper, depending on types of data and level of automation for a particular hospital. The type of data may include parameter settings for a piece of medical equipment used to treat a patient or parameter values obtained relating to physiology of a patient.
For example, various types of medical equipment are used to monitor or administer care to patients in different hospital departments. In a critical care unit, a ventilator is frequently used to ventilate a patient's lungs with breathing gas when the patient's ability to breathe on his or her own is impaired. In order to properly administer ventilation, a caregiver needs to first set up various settings for the ventilator. Examples of commonly required settings to control a ventilator include: Peak Inspiratory Pressure (PIP) setting for limiting the peak pressure during inspiration of air; and Positive End Expiratory Pressure (PEEP) setting for limiting the peak pressure at the end of expiration of air. Many other ventilator settings may also be controlled, depending on the capability of the particular ventilator.
Likewise, medical equipment may also be equipped with various physiological sensors so that the condition of a patient may be monitored. For example, commonly monitored parameters for a ventilator include Mean Airway Pressure (MAP) for indicating the mean pressure measured within the airway during the breathing cycle, and Tidal Volume Inspired (TVi) for measuring volume of gas inhaled by a patient during a normal breath. Of course, other different patient parameters may be monitored by other types of medical devices.
In addition, hospitals also have laboratories to analyze, for example, blood of a patient. The results of the blood tests may be printed out by a lab technician and given to a caregiver or entered electronically on a computer to be accessed by the caregiver. The caregiver can then analyze the results and choose a correct course of treatment for the patient.
The various exemplary patient data for a patient during his or her stay is now frequently stored electronically and often in a networked environment. A care provider may then access the data using, for example, web browser software through a network. This allows a caregiver to access the data throughout the hospital or even remotely through Internet.